


Perhaps they do not go so far

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Caught in the Act, F/M, Kissing, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 01:39:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9050059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: They disagree on their obligation.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hufflepuffhermione](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepuffhermione/gifts).



Should it have been a surprise? Mary couldn’t say so, not truly. She had observed the way Chaplain Hopkins’s steady gaze followed Emma about the ward, how subtly his face brightened when she arrived, when she spoke, when she hummed a hymn to a sick boy. She had seen the way Emma glanced back, when she thought Henry wasn’t looking, how she lingered at the end of the day if he was not present, the pretexts she made to find him, to ask him a question, however inconsequential it might be. Emma had talked a little of loyalty and promises but as if the subject troubled her, without the fine, bold confidence of the first days she’d come to Mansion House to work among the Confederates. She became less pretty and ever more gravely beautiful; Mary noted it silently but Dr. Hale did not, rude in his attempts to be complimentary, and Mademoiselle Beaufort made some exquisite drawings of the younger woman that Mary admired and envied. 

Henry Hopkins said very little when the Frenchwoman solicited his reaction, only, “They are so very like, the Lord has blessed you, I think.” Mary had espied one, tucked within the leaves of his Bible’s onion-skin pages, and thought how he must torment himself with his graven idol, how elaborate he must make his justifications for keeping it with him. They each said the other’s name with the greatest care and consideration, as if they must make sure not to say _Henry_ or _Emma_ , _darling_ or _dearest_ or _my sweet love_. Mary knew how much it took to keep an endearment from utterance when it wanted to be said and she appreciated their efforts, even if she did not entirely understand the barriers they must have felt were insurmountable. There were many marriages of men and women crossing the lines of battle and rich young ladies had married poor clergymen before, honorable clergymen had convinced the parents of sheltered young misses of the honor of being a minister’s wife. There was not death nor any law that barred them from each other, but Mary had learned the heart kept its secrets as avidly as the bee sought nectar, and she tried to withhold her judgment where it wasn’t wanted.

It was a blessing that it had been they who opened the door and not Hale or McBurney, Anne Hastings who was ready to cast aspersions wherever she could; she and Jed had been in idle conversation, talking just to hear the other’s voice, she knew, but they could not help themselves from what little was allowed them. She felt his eyes resting on her with something beyond fondness, as if he could never tire of looking at her, and she told herself it was more than a caress would be, not proscribed, something she could think about when night fell and she was alone and wishing, so passionately, that she must not be so. They had almost kept walking, both taken up with the effort not to let his hand go to the small of her back, where her stays clung to her; it was a sudden movement, Emma’s hand reaching up to Henry’s cheek, light in the shadow, that arrested them first and then the scene itself was the paralytic.

Oh, how entranced they were with each other! Mary felt a cannon could have launched its precious missile and still they would have paid it no mind, so taken were they with each other; Henry held Emma in his arms and hers were twined around him, her hands at his cheek, his neck, the dark hair that brushed his collar. They were lovely, she could not help thinking, so desperately in love, so sure a kiss was the solution, the tonic, the cure to their mutual longing, so young and ardent. She and Jed stood there, each transfixed a moment, remembering perhaps a time when they had felt thus, so long ago and it was her desire to turn and hide her face in his waistcoat, to feel his hand at the back of her head where her hair was secured, quite properly, in a matron’s braided chignon, that kept her from moving, her gaze focused on the lovers oblivious to their presence. She grasped it, the moment before he would speak and took his hand to startle him, to stop him, to guide him from the room. They retreated and he spoke at once.

“You think we should not have spoken? Mary?”

“I think, perhaps there is a time to be silent, you and I are not always most astute at discerning when we are most wanted,” she said. She was torn; she thought she had done Emma a disservice and yet, to alter the moment had not seemed possible.

“I suppose, it’s little enough, a kiss,” he said, looking at her eyes, her lips, casting his soul forth to speak to her if she would listen. If only she could let him know the thoughts that harried her, the depth of the emotion that lived within her, beat in her heart’s chambers with the blood, the impulse in her hands to reach, her very tongue to speak and even more urgently, to taste him, to be revealed and to learn all his secrets and knowing them, to stroke his forehead, the greying hair at his temples, to whisper how much, how dearly, still she loved him, how much more she loved him…

“No, it’s everything, Jedediah,” she replied. “Everything.”

**Author's Note:**

> A secret Santa gift for hufflepuffhermione for the Mercy Street 2016 Secret Santa, including both ships sailing with a full gale. The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
